Back From Asia: What Institutions Told Us in Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore
Ethereum is becoming infrastructure for global finance, and nowhere was that clearer than on the road. Over two weeks across ETHTokyo Week, Korea Blockchain Week and TOKEN2049 Singapore, our founder Kevin and the ETHGas team met builders, banks, treasuries and investors in three cities. Here is what we heard.
Tokyo: The Builder Room and the Institutional Room
We started on September 24 with an ETHGas community meetup, co-hosted with Fracton Ventures. The room was full of developers, validator operators and MEV researchers. Kevin talked about the biggest problem with blockspace today: on Ethereum, you only find out what happens to your transaction after you send it. He then walked through what ETHGas is building to fix that, how much of it is already live, and how validators, developers and newcomers can get involved.
The next day, Fracton Ventures hosted the Ethereum Institutional Summit, an invite-only event for around 300 people from Japanese banks, securities firms, funds and listed companies. The agenda covered stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, onchain treasury operations and institutional DeFi. The conversations were practical. Institutions weren't asking whether to get involved with Ethereum. They were asking how to run real financial activity on it.
Kevin joined the Institutional DeFi panel, moderated by Yudai Suzuki of Fracton Ventures, alongside Derek Walkush of Uniswap Labs, Alim Khamisa of Optimism , and Taisuke Isono of SMBC Nikko Securities. The panel looked at the outlook for compliant DeFi and how institutions can actually operate it.
Kevin also sat down for a fireside with Yuki Kishi of MAVAN, Bitmine, on how ETHGas makes Ethereum realtime, how it creates lanes for institutional access, and how ETH becomes the strategic asset.
Seoul: Putting ETH to Work
Korea Blockchain Week was the busiest part of the trip.
ETHGas was a general sponsor of EastPoint: Seoul 2026. On the main stage, Kevin joined the panel "Digital Asset Treasury: The New Frontier of Corporate Finance," with Hyunsu Jung of Hyperion and Christopher Jensen of StablecoinX. The discussion focused on what treasuries do after they've built a position, and how they put those assets to work. The takeaway: a digital asset treasury is no longer just a megaphone for a token. It is becoming a distribution channel. Bloomingbit covered the panel here: https://en.bloomingbit.io/feed/news/121133
Later in the week, Kevin gave the keynote "Realtime Ethereum" at Ethereum Korea One: Genesis. His case: blockspace is Ethereum's most valuable commodity, and institutions need a reliable, known lane to access it.
On October 1, he spoke at ETH Connect, hosted by Undefined Labs and eToday, on the panel "Where Ethereum Sits in Institutional Capital Flows". He was joined by Joseph Chalom of Sharplink , Isidoros Passadis of Lido, and Ed Felten of Offchain Labs. Mo Jalil of EthSystems moderated.
Singapore: TOKEN2049
We finished in Singapore. On October 7, Kevin joined the Bit Digital Stage at TOKEN2049 for "The Next Generation of ETH," with Sam Tabar of Bit Digital and Matthew of Ethereum Institutional, moderated by Amanda Cassatt of Serotonin. The takeaway: the next generation of ETH holders will treat blockspace as something to secure, not just as traders, but as nations looking for priority access to the network.
What the Two Weeks Added Up To
Across three cities, one message came through clearly. Institutions already own ETH. The next step is using Ethereum: settling transactions, moving tokenized assets, and running treasury operations onchain. To do that, they need reliable, high-speed access to blockspace.
That's what ETHGas builds. The Blockspace & Preconf Marketplace lets institutions secure capacity in advance, the way any mature commodity market works. Institutional Blockspace provides the trust layer between regulated finance and public Ethereum: fair ordering and predictable execution. Realtime Execution is the proof that this works on Ethereum itself, with preconfirmations in around 50ms, signed by the validator and backed by collateral.
A big thank you to all the organizers, partners, and everyone we connected with across Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore. It was great to be part of these conversations!
Ethereum is becoming infrastructure for global finance. ETHGas makes access to it reliable.
